Per the post, Coinbase Pro will now accept deposits of XLM for around 12 hours before enabling full trading. Coinbase notes that after establishing sufficient supply of XLM, it will open trading pairs in U.S. dollars, euro and Bitcoin (BTC) in phases.

XLM trading will go through three stages before enabling full trading, including limit, market and stop orders. The stages involve “transfer-only,” “post-only,” and “limit-only.” The first two stages will allow users to transfer XLM to Coinbase Pro accounts and post limit orders, while the subsequent one will enable customers to match limit orders.

XLM trading will be initially available for customers in Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions, expect the state of New York. Coinbase may add additional jurisdictions at a later time.

Last month, Coinbase Pro added support for Ripple (XRP), that joined already listed Ethereum Classic (ETC), Basic Attention Token (BAT) and privacy oriented altcoin Zcash (ZEC). In the past, these tokens were added to Coinbase Pro, before support for them was eventually extended to Coinbase.com and its apps for Android and iOS.

The recent addition of XRP to Coinbase was long-awaited by the crypto community. The coin reacted promptly to the news about its listing on Coinbase Pro, turning out to be one of the biggest winners on that day.

However, a report by blockchain research firm Diar stated that XRP breaks one of Coinbase’s requirements to be listed on the platform. In its “Digital Asset Framework,” Coinbase stipulates that “the ownership stake [in a token] retained by the team is a minority stake,” while, according to Diar, Ripple holds around 60 percent of the supply in escrow with a release schedule.

At press time, XLM has gained around 3.94 percent on the day and is trading around $0.108, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Litecoin, the early Bitcoin spin-off that appeared on the market back in October 2011, holds fourth place on the CoinMarketCap (CMC) list of the biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. The coin’s price is currently sitting at $56.42, and it seems very likely that it will catch up with its older brother sometime soon. In this article, U.Today is brushing the dust off its crystal ball to determine what is holding up for Litecoin in one or five years.

The top altcoin

The biggest challenge for Litecoin is to prove why investors should ditch Bitcoin, the crypto trailblazer, for one of its later versions. The cryptocurrency emerged as Bitcoin-Lite, which essentially explains the name of the coin. Litecoin does have plenty of similarities with its older brother, but it offers 2.5 times faster transactions and more efficient storage. However, it wasn’t enough to convince some naysayers who would call LTC an ‘incomprehensible Bitcoin clone’ as early as in 2011.

Litecoin has always been there alongside Bitcoin. For instance, LTC was the second biggest cryptocurrency as of April 28, 2013, with a market capitalization of 74.6 mln. On Sep. 28, 2014, Ripple’s XRP replaced LTC at second place. On January 21, 2016, Ethereum (ETH), the brainchild of Vitalik Buterin, eventually trumped Litecoin out of the top 3. As of March 9, 2018, it occupies fourth place with a market capitalization of 3.4 bln.

Breaking out of Bitcoin’s shadow

As of late, Litecoin is placing more emphasis on privacy in an attempt to become an anonymous version of Bitcoin that would rival the likes of Monero and Zcash. Litecoin founder Charlie Lee earlier himself revealed that the network would add Confidential Transactions as early as in 2019. If that happens, one should expect a significant price increase.

On top of that, it is also worth mentioning about Litecoin’s recent collaboration with BEAM, a brand-new privacy coin that is powered by the MimbleWimble protocol, made the coin’s price skyrocket 30 percent.

If Litecoin continues to move in that direction, its price will continue increasing throughout 2019 and 2020.

The drop in mining rewards

Just like Bitcoin, Litecoin is a Proof-of-Work (PoW) currency, and mining rewards are the bread and butter of cryptocurrency miners. The upcoming block reward reduction will have a significant impact on its price. Miners will not be selling the same amount of LTC, which will drastically reduce the supply of the coin. If the demands remain at the same level, the supply reduction will make the LTC price skyrocket.

Moon Overlord, a popular cryptocurrency analyst, earlier suggested that Litecoin bottomed out 200 days before its halving in 2015 and reached its current ATH of $375. The Litecoin halving is expected to occur in August 2019. The mining reward will go from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC. Since history tends to repeat itself, it is reasonable to expect a brand-new ATH in 2021.

However, one shouldn’t forget that Bitcoin is still the king, and Litecoin will most likely fail to experience any significant price bumps if the whole cryptocurrency market remains in the doldrums.

Restoring reputation and increasing adoption

Charlie Lee had headlines around the globe after selling off all of his Litecoin holdings at the peak of the bull market. The fact that the founder of the project got rid of all his coins was far from the best thing that could happen to Litecoin’s reputation. However, Lee later claimed that his decision to jump ship was motivated by solely good intentions – he wanted to express his opinion about the state of the cryptocurrency market without being accused of manipulation. Very few people bought the excuse with some even suggesting that the mammoth-sized sell-off was an inside job.

Lee didn’t abandon the project after all. As reported earlier by U.Today, he is currently focusing on streamlining the merchant adoption of Litecoin. For that purpose, he teamed up with HTC, which introduced LTC support for its first Blockchain smartphone, ‘EXODUS 1.’

If there is a huge growth in the number of users, the Litecoin price will grow exponentially in the nearest future.

2025 price prediction

When it comes to long-term price predictions, not a single expert could give a definitive answer. The coin’s future depends on multiple factors:

The pace of Litecoin adoption (if LTC fails to break into the mainstream, there is a very little chance that its price will shoot through the roof).

The team and management (infighting is never good for any project, and Litecoin has to avoid any conflicts and disagreements within the team).

The state of the cryptocurrency market (altcoins greatly depend on the price of Bitcoin, and the growing institutional interest could give LTC a huge boost).

Cryptocurrency regulations around the globe (if regulators crack down on Bitcoin, it will drag down altcoins as well).

It is worth mentioning that a lot of folks in the cryptocurrency space see Litecoin (LTC) as the best option for long-term investment given that this digital asset can serve as a store of value. Bitcoin is often called digital gold while Litecoin is digital silver. No matter how many new coins appear in the crypto space, Bitcoin and Litecoin are the two O.G. currencies with already established brands that are probably not going anywhere.

The bottom line

Yes, there are many factors that could push the price of Litecoin up (privacy-oriented feature, halving, increased adoption, etc.). Unless top altcoins stop tracking Bitcoin, it is highly likely that LTC will follow the cryptocurrency market. However, there are currently many exciting developments in the space, and the upcoming ‘Facebook Coin’ could be a complete game-changer.

Can Litecoin hit $100, $1,000, or $10,000 by 2025? Over the past few years, cryptocurrency enthusiasts have learned that there is nothing impossible, but one thing is certain – no one can predict for sure how much Litecoin is going to cost in 2025. Hypothetically, if Litecoin follows the growth model of Facebook, it could reach $961, but, of course, there are very little similarities between these two projects.

According to the announcement, the new support replaces the previous synthetic version of ETH that was available for trading on the app. The altcoin joins Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC) as options for buying, selling and transfers.

“This opens up the potential to use Ethereum as an on-ramp to invest in the other assets listed on Abra including, 50 fiat currencies, 30 cryptocurrencies, and the BIT10 crypto index,” reads the announcement.

To promote the launch, Abra is running a $25 ETH giveaway for new users who perform a first-time cash deposit or purchase from a US-based bank.

This news comes roughly a month after Abra announcedthat it will soon be adding stock and ETF investing to the app. With the integration, investors would be able to use Bitcoin (BTC) to invest in stocks and ETFs from anywhere in the world with 155 different countries supported.

ETH is currently down 1.5% on the day to $132.96, giving the altcoin a $13.99 billion market cap and making it the second largest constituent in the AltDex 100 Index (ALT100).

Disclaimer: This article’s author has cryptocurrency holdings that can be tracked here. This article is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. Always conduct your own due diligence before making investments.

Surprisingly, XRP came out as the preferred cryptocurrency with 60% of … some also alleged that Ripple must have paid Coinbase to list the asset.

Weiss Ratings conducts Twitter polls once in a while to ascertain the crypto communities perception and preferences. This time, the Twitter poll was to determine which of four cryptocurrencies (BTC, XRP, ETH, and ADA) would respondents choose as their crypto of the year.

Surprisingly, XRP came out as the preferred cryptocurrency with 60% of over 8000 respondents going for it. This was followed by ADA with 24% of the respondents choosing it. BTC followed with 12% of respondents and ETH had only 4%.

This is rather surprising because any random person in the cryptocurrency space would have expected BTC to be the preferred crypto asset, first because it is the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Secondly, Bitcoin has been growing ahead of ETH and XRP leaving the two behind and thirdly, DataLight’s new information on cryptocurrency shows Bitcoin is the most profitable digital asset of all time. The same data puts XRP as the 6th of the top ten most profitable assets.

It is therefore unclear why XRP has gained so much popularity. Could it be because of Ripple’s achievements in facilitating cross-border payments or is there something else? To start with, XRP is not yet a good store of value, not to talk of the adverse reputation that follows the cryptocurrency ranging from the idea that it is “centralized” to the idea that it is a “security”.

Ripple is said to control more than half of the asset supply which many say makes it a centralized body. The recent listing of XRP on Coinbase has been questioned based on this same argument and some also alleged that Ripple must have paid Coinbase to list the asset.

Not only XRP but ADA is preferred before Bitcoin. In fact, it doubles the percentage of those who prefer BTC. Their choice of assets definitely is not driven by profit or the need to store value but something else which is not clear. Why do you think XRP has so much popularity compared to BTC and ETH which are both bigger and more valuable in terms of price?